A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years

by Diarmaid MacCulloch

Once the plague had begun retreating in intensity, there was a widespread impulse to build chapels and votive shrines on the part of survivors wanting to express their gratitude (and perhaps guilt) for their survival, but while plague still raged, there was an equally powerful impulse to seek someone to blame for God’s anger: either oneself, collective sin in society or some external scapegoat. All three thoughts united in a renewed and much grimmer version of the flagellant movement which had begun in Italy in 1260 (see p. 400) but now found widespread expression in northern Europe.3 There was no trace of the earlier flagellants’ emphasis on peace-making. On the contrary, outbreaks of flagellant activity became associated with quite exceptional anti-Semitic violence, which included the torturing and burning alive of Jews in groups. This was justified by accusations that Jews had poisoned wells and food supplies: the torture supplied the necessary confessions. In the Rhineland and in some other central European regions, Jewish communities were effectively wiped out; overall this was ‘the most severe persecution of Jews before the twentieth century’.